Virtue

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…at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living…

The characteristic question of ancient ethics is “How can I be happy?” and the basic answer to it is “by means of virtue.” But in the relevant sense of the word, happiness—the conventional English translation of the ancient Greek eudaimonia—is not a matter of…

…of equating this ethics with virtue ethics, some authors have suggested that this portrayal sounds very much like the description of an Aristotelian virtue. Not opposed to a legitimate place for emotion in ethical discourse, Aristotle outlined the importance of feeling at the proper times and for good reasons. He…

The emphasis on virtuous action as the goal of learning was a founding principle of humanism and (though sometimes sharply challenged) continued to exert a strong influence throughout the course of the movement. Salutati, the learned chancellor of Florence whose words could batter cities,…

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People’s virtues are a subset of their good qualities. They are not innate, like eyesight, but are acquired by practice and lost by disuse. They are abiding states, and they thus differ from momentary passions such as anger and pity. Virtues are states of…

…prince relies on his own virtue, but, if virtue is to enable him to acquire a state, it must have a new meaning distinct from the New Testament virtue of seeking peace. Machiavelli’s notion of virtù requires the prince to be concerned foremost with the art of war and to…

…found in Aristotle’s theory of virtue. According to this theory, the authority of moral virtues and moral rules lies in the fact that habituation to such virtues and adherence to such rules enable humans to pass from a state of imperfection to perfection—from (as MacIntyre put it) “untutored human nature”…

If virtue were dependent on culture and culture the prerogative of a privileged minority, what was the prospect for the rest: “We have physicians, geometricians, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians and painters in plenty; but no longer a citizen among us.” Rousseau is thus of the Enlightenment…

…that, once one knows what virtue is, it is impossible not to act virtuously. Anyone who fails to act virtuously does so because he incorrectly identifies virtue with something it is not. This is what is meant by the thesis, attributed to Socrates by Aristotle, that virtue is a form…

…keeping with his conception of virtue as a form of knowledge he uses an intellectual test, not merely a ceremonial test, to determine whether someone is pious. You may participate in the conventional practices of civic religion, but can you say what piety is? If you cannot, do you at…

…good man cannot be harmed; virtue, in other words, is by itself sufficient for happiness. That doctrine played a central role in a school of thought, founded by Diogenes of Sinope, that had an enduring influence on Greek and Roman philosophy: Cynicism. Like Socrates, Diogenes was concerned solely with ethics,…

…distinctive Sophistic tenets was that virtue can be taught, a position springing naturally from the Sophists’ professional claim to be the teachers of young men. But the word virtue (aretē) implied both success in living and the qualities necessary for achieving such success, and the claim that aretē could be…

All virtues are based exclusively on right knowledge, self-control (sōphrosynē) being the knowledge of the right choice, fortitude the knowledge of what must be endured and what must not, and justice the right knowledge “in distribution.” The passions, which are the cause of all evil, are…